


Twenty Random Facts About Colby Granger

by swingandswirl



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Backstory, Granger Family Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingandswirl/pseuds/swingandswirl
Summary: What it says on the tin. Twenty facts about our favorite farmboy-slash-spy.





	Twenty Random Facts About Colby Granger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the September challenge over at savecolby . Many, many thanks to iulia_linnea for the initial idea, and to aspire_amita for being a far more patient audience than I deserve. 
> 
> There is an allusion to rape in #18; nothing graphic, or even over, but please feel free to skip.

**Twenty Random Facts About Colby Granger**  
  
  
**I.**  
  
Colby’s always been an outsider.  
  
He’s an only child in a town where a dozen are common, quiet and bookish when most boys his age choose to speak with fists rather than words.  
  
The differences only deepen when he gets older. He’s the first Granger to go to college, the first Colburn to give up the trappings of inherited wealth for the rough and tumble of Army life, the first of either family to be openly bisexual.  
  
In the process, he’s managed to alienate pretty much every member of his blood family. Heck, he’s pretty sure most of them don’t know where he is right now.  
  
Sure, it hurts. But most times, when he looks around at Charlie and Alan, at Don and Megan and David, at this family of choice he’s forged, Colby really can’t bring himself to care.  
  
  
**II.**  
  
  
Colby only lets himself get seriously trashed two days out of the year- his Dad’s birthday, and Dwayne’s.  
  
On his Dad’s birthday, he drinks to remember.  
  
On Dwayne’s, he drinks to forget.  
  
  
**III.**  
  
  
Once a year, Colby puts on his dress blues and medals and stands tall and proud at L.A.’s annual Memorial Day celebrations before locking himself in his study with a photo album and a bottle of whiskey for his own, private grieving.  
  
He may have fought the good war, but that doesn’t stop the losses from hurting just as bad.  
  
  
**IV.**  
  
  
Colby loves to cook, loves to pamper himself and his family with fresh food and good wine.  
  
Most days, he barely has time to throw a quick bite together, but sometimes, when there's not a big case on, Colby takes the time to make a full three-course meal for himself and Charlie.  
  
Dinner those nights is exquisite.  
  
Dessert is even better.  
  
  
**V.**  
  
  
The only pieces of jewellery Colby wears are his dog tags, his wedding ring, and the woven leather bracelet Charlie gave him when they first decided to make this thing between them permanent. He’s not the type to go for gold chains and pimped-out SUVs, and he’s perfectly fine with that.  
  
Sometimes, though, when he gets drunk enough, he remembers the diamond-studded Rolex that was delivered anonymously to his apartment a week after Joey Santiago made it home safe and sound, and wonders what might have been.  
  
  
**VI.**  
  
  
Colby doesn't publicise it, but he’s a lot smarter than he looks. Wrestling might have gotten him into college, but it was effort of the mental kind that got him his summa cum laude.  
  
Playing the dumb farmboy is hard, sometimes, especially when a perp gives him shit about it or he has to ask Charlie to explain something he already gets, but it’s part of what he’s been sworn to do, and Colby doesn’t need the Whiz Kid’s intellect to understand that duty always comes first.  
  
  
**VII.**  
  
  
Colby adores his nieces and nephew, loves being ‘cool Uncle Colby’ to Keisha and Donna Sinclair, AJ and Rebekah Eppes, and Marissa Fleinhardt. He and Charlie have already decided on no kids- between Colby’s job and Charlie’s genius, it just wouldn’t be fair to any of them, and mostly, Colby’s OK with that.  
  
Sometimes, however, when he sees the paternal pride etched on Don’s face or the pure love in David’s eyes, he can’t help but wish for a curly-haired, green-eyed little girl to call his own.  
  
  
**VIII.**  
  
  
Colby comes from money, money so old it makes Megan’s family look like newbie upstarts. Despite his formal disownment from the Colburn clan, there’s still a good chunk of change in the trust fund his homophobic, Bible-thumping, card-carrying Klanswoman Grandmother Colburn left him.  
  
Colby takes perverse pleasure in donating the majority of the fund’s annual income to PFLAG.  
  
  
**IX.**  
  
  
Despite what many people think, Colby isn’t named for the cheese- in fact, he hates the stuff.  
  
Officially, he’s named after Trevor Colburn, his maternal grandfather and all-around bastard, but Colby’s Dad once got drunk enough to tell him about Colby Forrester, about laughing blue eyes and a smile that could light up all of Boise, about kindness and grace mixed with courage and integrity. About how he’d been able to do little more than ease the other man’s passing with gentle words and soft touches when a bullet ripped through his liver, one meant for Colby’s father.  
  
Colby thinks he prefers the latter namesake.  
  
  
**X.**  
  
  
Charlie wants a big wedding, and Colby can’t find it in his heart to deny him, even if he’d rather just go down to City Hall on his next day off.  
  
What follows is a 600-person extravaganza that takes six months and the combined effort of half the L.A field office and most of CalSci to plan and execute. Alan’s happy as a clam, and so is Charlie, but Colby’s tempted more than once to just grab his fiancé and run off to Vegas for the weekend.  
  
Their actual wedding day is a happy blur- Colby vaguely remembers saying his vows, breaking the glass, and kissing Charlie with more intensity than is probably appropriate- but at the end of it, Charlie is his and he is Charlie’s before God, the math, and several hundred witnesses, and that makes every single bit of insanity worth it.  
  
  
**XI.**  
  
  
Colby is three forms away from finishing his college apps when a call comes in from one of his Dad’s old Army buddies, who’s now an instructor at West Point.  
  
Children of servicemen, Captain Rogers explains, are entitled to be nominated to a seat- would Colby be interested?  
  
He is, and five months later, he has a choice between business at Yale and a sixth generation of duty, honour and following orders.  
  
One look at the array of photographs on the shelf above his desk, and Colby knows it isn’t a choice at all.  
   
  
**XII.**  
  
  
Colby tells his team that Dwayne pulled him out of the Humvee, that he saved his life.  
  
He doesn’t tell them about the four soldiers they couldn’t save, the four other members of Raptor Three, First Special Operations Detachment Delta.  
  
He doesn’t tell them he buried the fifth the day Dwayne came to him with dollar signs in his eyes and treason in his heart.  
  
He doesn’t tell his team about the five dead Deltas- or that he wishes there was a sixth.  
  
  
**XIII.**  
  
  
Colby sends his family a wedding photo and a copy of the announcement in the L.A. Times, along with a letter asking for their acceptance, if not their blessing.  
  
Two weeks later, he receives a formal notice of disownment and a letter from his grandfather telling Colby never to contact the Colburns again.  
  
Years later, when he’s going through his mother’s things after the funeral, he finds the photo in the back of her dresser drawer, worn with age and faded in patches, patches that he knows without a doubt are from his mother’s tears.  
  
He just wishes he knew whether they were tears of joy, or sorrow.  
  
  
**XIV.**  
  
  
His clean-cut good looks, Army background, and Idaho drawl all contribute to his teammates’ image of him as a good midwestern farmboy, one Colby does nothing to dispel.  
  
Which is why, the first time he strips off his shirt to reveal tattooed skin and pierced nipples, his team is caught between shock, disbelief, and not a few admiring glances.  
  
He decides not to tell them about the Harley just yet.  
  
  
**XV.**  
  
  
Colby’s favourite thing to do with his father is go fishing, especially when nothing’s biting.  
  
It’s at times like these, when all is quiet and the outside world seems far away, that James Granger tells Colby about duty and honour, that he teaches his son far more valuable lessons than any he’ll ever learn in a classroom.  
  
Years later, as Colby prepares to take CJ Carter on his first fishing trip, he’s glad that at least this part of the Granger legacy will live on.  
  
  
**XVI.**  
  
  
The first time Charlie helps them on a case, Colby’s caught between amusement and disbelief.  
  
By the third, it’s changed to respect mixed with a tinge of awe.  
  
It takes until the seventh time they work together for Colby to figure out why he always looks forward to seeing Charlie’s curly mop around the office, why his pulse spikes when Charlie shoots him that smile he seems to reserve just for Colby.  
  
Their first kiss is during their eleventh case together, the first time they sleep together is after the thirteenth.  
  
Colby proposes during their twenty-third.  
  
Eight cases later, they’re married, and it’s only then that realisation hits Colby, and he can’t help but laugh at the strange ways of Fate.  
  
He’d always known there was a reason he liked primes.  
  
  
**XVII.**  
  
  
The best moment of Colby’s life, hands down, takes place in a dank room on a decrepit Chinese freighter.  
  
He hears his teammates’ voices through the burn of the potassium chloride, and he feels a vast wave of relief and joy.  
  
At least when he dies, he won’t be alone.  
  
  
**XVIII.**  
  
  
The entire team knows rape cases set Colby on edge, make his punches that much harder, his tongue that much sharper. They all figure it’s the product of an upbringing that insists on opening doors for women, carrying their bags and calling them ma’am.  
  
They don’t know it’s also the result of years spent trying to undo the damage one sadistic monster inflicted on someone he loved.  
  
  
**XIX.**  
  
  
Colby would rather shoot himself in the foot than admit it, but living in L.A has made him a heck of a clotheshorse.  
  
After years spent in BDUs and itchy dress uniforms, he revels in the freedom to head on over to Rodeo Drive and pick up a nice pair of jeans or a suit that’s actually tailored to his athletic frame. The appreciative glances he gets from the girls (and a few of the guys) don’t exactly hurt, either.  
  
Every so often, though, he’ll pull on one of the sweaters his Grandma Granger sends him every Christmas, even though technically L.A’s too warm for it.  
  
Designer clothing might make him feel sexy, but his Gram’s sweaters feel like home.  
  
  
**XX.**  
  
  
Colby’s a born competitor, never satisfied with anything less than the best. He’s been on honour roll since grade school, a state-level triathlete in college, and a Captain in the Army when several of the people he graduated with are still stuck at First Lieutenant. Being a counteragent ties his hands for a bit, but once those shackles are gone, he’s right back where he started, at the top.  
  
So it comes to a surprise to everyone who knows him that he’s willing to settle for second place in a relationship. Charlie might wear his ring, but everyone knows that math is his true love.  
  
What everyone doesn’t realise, Colby thinks as he watches Charlie fly across his boards before he fucks his Whiz Kid over the couch in the corner, is that sometimes second place is the biggest victory of all.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written and posted on LJ in 2008; it is being reposted here for archival purposes.
> 
> It's no secret that I love Colby Granger, and I love giving characters unexpected backstory. This was a lot of fun to write, and it was really fun making him less of a stereotypical small town farmboy than canon seems to think he is!
> 
> ++
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated. Come find me at [Dreamwidth](http://swingandswirl.dreamwidth.org) if you want to chat!


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